January 4, 2010

Help Save Capitalism!

Capitalism can work, but it needs to return to its core values and government must implement existing laws that assure FREE MARKETS!

What this country needs is a political system where hundreds of thousands of entities are striving to produce the products and services desired by its citizens at the highest quality possible and at the lowest cost. An additional objective is to raise the standard of living for all Americans. This is a free market system.

According to John Bogle, the father of the indexed mutual fund and the founder of the Vanguard group of mutual funds, the world’s largest mutual fund management company, this should be the goal of capitalism. He states that the purpose of capitalism is to serve their customers, the citizens of this country, and to make a profit. This was, and should be, its core value.

He is concerned that capitalism is losing its soul and something needs to be done to change or the United Stated will go the way of the Roman Empire. Like Rome, we tend to believe that we lead the world in values. Some examples he gives include:

• Anyone who disagrees with us is just wrong and needs to change their values to align with ours.• Rome had their coliseums and gladiators and we have our sports teams, gambling and lottery.• Like Rome, and Brittan, we think we can fight wars across the world without costing us a part of our standard of living.• We have a political system driven by money and greed.• 1/10th of our population control most of the wealth in our country, not unlike Rome.

Mr. Bogle goes on to say that corporations today are run in a manner to optimize the wealth of senior management; not the shareholders. He holds the Directors responsible for this for not doing their job.

He also says that the decline of our country is shown by the fact that China holds 25% of our countries debt. Two generations ago, if someone wanted to make a large purchase they saved their money until they could buy it. Now they pull out a plastic card.

Click on the picture below to listen to John Bogle discussing these issues.

Do not listen and weep! Listen and do something about it!Sign the petition!

The problems that Mr. Bogle sees can be solved if we let our markets be free by enforcing anti-trust laws and reforming our political contribution laws so the oligopolies cannot buy the votes of our representatives in Washington.